Culture serum, such as Fetal Bovine Serum (“FBS”), is a culture medium supplement commonly used for in vitro culturing of cells and tissue. For instance, FBS can be utilized to promote cell growth and facilitate protein production. Culture serum is generally derived from blood via removal of the clotting factors and blood cells, typically by centrifugation after the red blood cells have been allowed to clot.
Unfortunately, culture serum, especially FBS, is expensive. Furthermore, serum has a limited range of components to support cell growth, with albumin and gamma globulins being the primary proteinaceous components. As such, additional materials have been used in combination with or as replacement for serum to help control and promote cell growth and lower costs. For example, natural animal-derived biological factors, such as purified primatone and albumin, have been used as serum replacements as well as serum additives in cell culturing. However, the quality of known animal-derived materials can vary from batch to batch, which can lead to inconsistent or even unpredictable cell growth in the culture. Moreover, these materials can also be extremely expensive to produce.
A need currently exists for culturing supplements that can be inexpensively provided in commercially useful amounts. Also, a need exists for culture supplements that can provide consistent and predictable cell growth in the utilizing cultures. Also, a need exists for economical methods for providing specifically designed and tailored preparations, and specifically preparations including a well defined protein profile and/or a minimum number of purified biological factors such as proteins, lipids, fatty acids, and the like.